


A Christmas Conundrum

by jtjenna (pornographicpenguin)



Series: What We Will Find [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Christmas, Fluff, M/M, Tattoos, jean and marco snark at each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 13:08:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2851937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pornographicpenguin/pseuds/jtjenna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What the fuck does Eren Jaeger want for Christmas?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Christmas Conundrum

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is a Christmas present for tumblr user sinistercacaphony, because she's awesome, edits all my fic, and let me write this instead of buy her a shirt this year :P
> 
> it's a sequel to previous fics in this series, but pretty much the only things you need to know if you want to read it by itself are that eren, jean, and mikasa got held up in a gas station a month or two ago, eren has a couple of tattoos, and jean is a film major.
> 
> also, since i did actually end up getting this done on time, merry christmas everyone! i hope you all have wonderful holidays, christmas or otherwise :)

“What the fuck does Eren Jaeger want for Christmas?”

Jean stares contemplatively at a set of mannequins on display in the window of the store in front of them:  a stylish-looking pair of kids in muted blues and grays, a mom decked out in an unfortunate amount of plaid and the dad in a scarf pulled up uncomfortably high over his mouth and nose.  Reminds him of Mikasa, actually.

Behind him, Marco, clutching an almost comically large coffee cup in his hand, mumbles, “Whatever is probably fine.”

“Shitty answer,” Jean comments back, just as grumpily.

Marco groans.  “Get him a shirt or something.”

Jean straightens, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket before immediately taking them out to fiddle with the alignment of his glasses.  “Dumb.”  He glances across the mall, over the little bridge that connects either side of the second floor.  “I wanna get him something…” _meaningful_ , Jean thinks, but doesn’t say.

“That is why we came here,” Marco says.  “At nine in the morning.”  He gazes rather wistfully down at the plastic lid of his cardboard cup.  “On a Saturday.”

Jean scoffs, picking up his stride and setting off down into the rest of the mall.  “Suck it up.”

Behind him, Marco grouses, “Just ‘cause you don’t sleep....”

Jean pointedly ignores him, and continues.  “But really, what would Eren like?”

Falling into stride with him, Marco sticks his arm across Jean’s body to point at the store to their right.  “That.”

Jean turns his head.  “That’s a Chili’s.”

Marco laughs, not able to help the dumb grin pulling the corners of his mouth up.  “Yeah, get him that.”

“The entire Chili’s?”

“The entire fucking Chili’s.”

Jean laughs.  “You’re useless.”

Marco grins.  “Thanks.”

\---

“I know this may be a surprise to you,” Marco says, “but Eren is a lot less hipster-ish than you.”

Jean sets down a decidedly soft, decidedly plaid pair of pants that he had most definitely not been about to rub on his face.  “I know,” he grumbles.  “They’re cool, though.”

“You’re right,” Marco says.  “You should totally get them for Eren.  He’d love them.”

Jean blinks.  “Really?”

Marco rolls his eyes.  “No, dumbass.”

Jean pinches the bridge of his nose.  “Right.  Of course.”  An eye peeks open, glaring at Marco.  “Also, you’re the dumbass.”

“Right, I’m the dumbass here.   _I’m_  the one who wants to buy my dirty, Axe-wearing boyfriend plaid skinny jeans.”

“Eren’s not dirty,” Jean counters, muttering the following, “most of the time,” just below Marco’s hearing threshold before turning around and running straight into one of the store’s clerks.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” the clerk says, hands occupied with a stack of unidentifiable clothes items at the same time Jean mumbles, “Oh, whoops.”

Marco steps up faster than Jean can manage to say anything else.  “I’m so sorry!” he says, smiling sheepishly.  “Are you okay?”

“Oh, uh, fine,” the clerk says, smiling back nervously, with all his teeth.  “It’s fine, thanks.”

“Oh, good,” Marco says.  “Sorry again.”

“No problem, no problem,” the guy says, stepping to the side and around the both of them.  Distractedly, as if he’s reading off a card, he says, “Enjoy your shopping experience.”

“Of course.”  Marco grins.  And the moment the clerk’s out of earshot, he jabs Jean in the side with his elbow.   _“‘Whoops’?”_

Jean scoffs, grabbing at Marco’s elbow.  “What?”

“You’re so rude, oh my god.”  Marco drags a hand down his forehead as he pulls Jean in the direction of the door.

“That wasn’t rude!” Jean hisses, holding a hand up in the general direction of the clerk.  “You’re overly nice!”

“You can’t be overly fucking nice, Jean,” Marco says, as the two of them start to head out of the store.  “And you said _whoops_.”

“It was an accident!  You say that when you fuck up!”

Marco sighs.  “You’re fucking hopeless.”

“You’re fucking hopeless.”

\---

“How about food?” Marco suggests.  “Eren loves food.”

“That’s a stupid idea,” Jean whines, twiddling with the straw in his iced tea.  “Like, ‘here, boyfriend, here’s this potato, hope you have a meaningful first Christmas with me!’  As if.”

“I meant like a gift card or something,” Marco grouses, jabbing a spoon into his own smoothie.

“Gift cards are not romantic.”

“Eren Jaeger is not romantic.”

Jean sucks at the straw of his drink, and it makes that obnoxious sucking noise.  He’s officially out of iced tea, then.  “Point,” he says as he pries the plastic lid off the cup, shaking it a bit and watching the ice settle.  “But he’s still gonna care if I get him something lame.”  Jean tilts the plastic cup back and lets an ice cube fall into his mouth.  “And gift cards are lame,” he mumbles as he starts to chew.

“There’s just no pleasing you, is there?”

Jean slumps forward, a loud crunching sound coming from his mouth.  “Not really.”  Marco cringes.

All at once, Marco snatches the drink out right from under Jean, grabbing the lid as he goes.

Jean frowns.  “What -- “

“Getting you a refill!” Marco says, smiling.

A pause.  “Why?”

“Because I’m nice!” Marco tosses over his shoulder as he stomps away.  “And you should probably make a dentist’s appointment soon!”

Jean’s expression falls into one of practiced disbelief.  “I’ll chew on ice if I damn well want to, Marco!”

A few yards away, Jean watches as Marco pointedly tips the cup into a water fountain, the remaining cubes of ice clattering against the metal, and refills it with water.

“You know,” Jean says when Marco places the now-full cup back in front of him, “it’s not actually a refill if you don’t fill it up with what was in it before.”  He picks up the cup, pressing the lid back on.  “This was iced tea.”

Marco rolls his eyes.  “As if you need more caffeine.”  

“I -- “ Jean cuts himself off.  “Yeah, okay.  Fair enough.”

\---

“How about movies?  He likes movies, right?”

“He likes _you_ ,” Marco says.  “ _You_  like movies.”

“No, no, I mean like -- not _my_ kinda movies, like.  Action.  Pow pow.  Boom boom.”  Jean says this with a total lack of excitement, and more than a small amount of disdain.

“I mean, I guess,” Marco says, trailing Jean down the main aisle, waving politely at the woman standing behind the cash register when she calls out a greeting to them.

“Does he even own a single DVD?” Jean asks as he walks down the _Action_ aisle.  “Or a blu-ray?”

“I dunno, you’re the one who’s dating him.”

Jean groans, frustrated and feeling rather helpless after having caught sight of an entire shelf filled with only Transformers movies.  He first gazes wistfully at and meanders over to the little shelf in the back labelled _Foreign_.  “Maybe he would like…”

Marco grabs Jean by the back of the shirt and physically tugs him away, towards the exit.  “He would not.”

Jean sputters indignantly.  “I wasn’t -- “

“I’m not losing you to Indie hell, Jean.  We are not here for you.”

“It’ll only be like -- two minutes, come on!” he protests.  “I need to watch this one film for class -- !”

Marco gives him a scathing look.  “It is eleven in the morning.  We have been here for two hours.  If you’re not gonna look for something for Eren, I’m not sticking around.”

Jean slaps Marco’s hand off of him and goes about leaving the store with a decidedly childish pout on his lips.  Out of the corner of his eye, Jean catches the cashier giving the two of them a rather amused look.  “Yeah, okay.”

Marco pats him on the back, directing Jean firmly away from the store.  “I know this just breaks your little film major heart, but…” Marco trails off, clutching both of Jean’s shoulders in his hands as he directs Jean down the hallway, towards the other end of the mall.

Shrugging Marco’s hands off with an offended frown, Jean scoffs.  “Shut up.”

\---

It’s when they’ve walked by the big Christmas tree display and the frankly obnoxious line of haggard-looking parents lined up to let their children sit on the lap of a man that reeks so much of cigarette smoke that Jean can smell it from a solid ten feet away for the third time that it occurs to Jean:  “I honestly have no fucking idea what to get him.”

Marco rolls his eyes.  “Just get him a sweater or something.”

Jean groans.  “He’ll hate it.”

“No,” Marco corrects, “he’ll be absolutely and totally indifferent to it.”

“That’s _worse_.”

As they pass a candy shop, Marco places a hand on Jean’s back and says, “Look, just get him candy.”

Jean blinks.  “That’s dumb.”  A pause.  “And it wouldn’t stay good long enough.”

Without missing a beat, Marco points to the next store.  “Get him something from Yankee Candle.”

Jean makes an aggravated noise that could be interpreted as either frustrated or intensely confused.  “What the fuck?” he says, but that doesn’t stop him from letting his eyes linger over the big glass jars and warm colors and thinking, for a split-second, _maybe?_

Giggling, Marco proposes, “Dollar Store?”

Desperate, tired, and pretty done with the whole situation, Jean throws his hands up.  “Sure!  Let’s get him something from the Dollar Store!”

Marco laughs, only squinting his eyes a _little_  worriedly as Jean goes into the Dollar Store, totally ignoring the clerk greeting the two of them as he stomps a few aisles back.  Marco watches, bemused, as he turns down the office supplies aisle.  “What if I just got him like, twenty dollars worth of pens?”

“Uhm,” Marco says, lingering rather awkwardly behind Jean as he rifles through the selection of writing utensils with a look on his face that reminds Marco just a bit of 2007 Britney Spears.  He places a hand on Jean’s back.  “Are you okay?”

Jean sighs.  “Yeah, I just…” he trails off, a little melodramatically.  “I’m in Christmas hell.”

Marco pats him consolingly on the back, trying and failing to muffle his snickering.

“And I still have to get you something.”

\---

“Okay, okay, okay,” Jean says, holding his hands up.  “We can leave, just -- go over there for a second.”

Marco gives him a quizzical look.  “What?”

“Like -- ten minutes, just go stare at the creepy Santa or something, and then we can go.”

Jean can see the exact moment Marco’s expression resolves from confusion into a look of understanding, his eyebrows rising up his forehead and his mouth parting into a little ‘o’.  He smiles.  “Oh, okay, sure Jean, whatever you say!” he says, waving a hand over his shoulder.  “I have absolutely no idea what you’re doing!”  He takes about five steps away, looks in the other direction, and says a little too loudly, “Hm, I wonder what Jean’s going to get me for Christmas!”  A couple walking by gives him an odd look as they pass.

Jean pinches the bridge of his nose and mutters to himself, “You smug fucking asshole.”

Marco grins.

\---

Jean ends up departing the mall down one present -- a plaid scarf in blue, which will compliment Marco’s eyes and hold less than no interest for Eren Jaeger -- and up exactly zero ideas on what to get his boyfriend for Christmas.

“I want to get him something _meaningful_ ,” Jean says.  “Something cool.”  He throws a hand up in the air, illustratively.  “Something that he’ll remember ten years from now, ‘Yeah, Jean Kirstein gave that to me.  He was awesome.’”

Marco rolls his eyes.  “I think the major flaw in your plan is that Eren doesn’t have things.”

Jean sighs and mumbles to himself, “He’s got a box.”

“What?” Marco asks.

“Have you ever been over to their place?” Jean asks.  Marco shakes his head, and Jean continues.  “It’s a two-bedroom place and Eren usually sleeps on the couch -- which I don’t think he cares about, since he isn’t even there most nights, even before we were dating.”  Jean shuffles from foot to foot, restlessly.  “He’s got, like, this box of stuff under the couch that is his stuff.”

Marco lets out a surprised half-laugh.  “ _What?"_

Jean continues, “I swear, it’s like this little cardboard box and it’s got like random shit in it and that is Eren’s shit and that is all the shit he has.”  He’s aware his tone is becoming more and more incredulous as he continues, but he keeps going.  “He’s got that and some clothes and a toothbrush in his bag or something.”

Marco blinks.

“Apparently all of his shit in the box is also, like -- only things he’s gotten since college.  He, like -- threw everything else away before they came here, or something.”

Marco stares.  “And you thought you were gonna get him something at a _mall?"_

Jean pinches the bridge of his nose.  “Marco, shut _up_ ,” he groans.  “I mean, there’s gotta be something.”

Marco hums.  It doesn’t sound like he believes Jean at all.

\---

"You're gonna get him a tattoo?"

Marco's voice comes tinny over the cell phone, pressed warm against the skin of Jean's face. "Yeah," he says, shoving his hands under his armpits in a desperate attempt to ward off the December cold nipping at his fingers.

"Really?" Marco asks, a hesitant kind of doubt tinging his tone.

"It's a good idea," Jean says. He turns his eyes to follow a pair of cars rumbling by below him, peering at the headlights over the bars of the balcony.

A pause. In the same tone, Marco hazards, "Isn't that a little...serious?" He smacks his lips in that way he does when he's trying real hard not to hurt someone's feelings. "You have only been dating for...ten months?"

"Eleven," Jean corrects him, and then relents, "Ten and a half." He attempts to drown out the snickering on the other end of the line with an indignant protest -- "I risked my _l_ _ife_  for him, Marco."

More laughing. "The way I heard it," Marco says, "you spent most of the time you were holed up in there cowering behind him."

Jean flushes. "I did not."

Marco clicks his tongue, humming with an annoyingly superior lilt. "Of course you didn't."

"I was manly as fuck," Jean says.

Marco hums again, more distractedly. Contemplatively. "So, you -- you really are pretty serious?"

Jean stiffens. "Yeah," is all he says, laden with more meaning than the word would usually hold.

“Because a tattoo is like.  On your body.  Forever.”

Jean leans an elbow on the railing, placing his forehead in his palm.  “I know.”

“And every time he sees that tattoo for the _rest of his life_  -- “

Blushing, Jean exclaims into the receiver, “It’s not like I’m gonna pick it for him, Marco!”

“Never said you would,” Marco says.  “But it doesn’t really matter -- it’s still gonna be your tattoo, you payed for it, and he’s always gonna think of this Christmas with you whenever he sees it.”

Jean sighs.  “Yeah, I -- “

“And you’re okay with that?”

Jean watches his breath expand out from his lips in an icy white cloud.  “Yeah.  I think so.”  He smiles.  “We bonded emotionally over having guns waved in our faces.”

Marco exhales a hot breath of air that crackles like static in Jean’s ear.  He’s not sure if it’s supposed to be a laugh or not.  “You think he’ll like it?”

“Yeah, he’ll -- yeah.”  Jean swallows.  “You were right about -- it’s either get him something he’ll give less than two shits about or take a chance and get him something he’ll love.  Or hate.”  He sighs.  “And, I mean, what’s even the point if I don’t know him well enough to get him something he’ll love after this long?”

“Jean,” Marco says.  “I can soundly say that that is the stupidest thing I’ve heard all day.”

Jean’s laugh reverberates loudly off the glass wall of the apartment he shares with Marco.  “Kind of, yeah.”

A sigh from the other end of the line.  “Well, I wish you luck.  Hope it doesn’t blow up in your face and implode your relationship from within.”

Jean scrunches his eyebrows up, glaring at the wall.  “You’re kinda mean, you know that?”

“Only to you, Jean,” Marco giggles.  “Only to you.”

\---

He wakes up on Christmas morning with his boyfriend pressed up against him, body heat trapped under the comforter.  Marco left a few days ago -- out of town to see his parents -- so Jean and Eren had spent Christmas Eve getting uproariously drunk watching the Tinkerbell movies on Netflix.  Grayish light filters in through the cloud cover and into the bedroom and Jean’s head throbs.  The last thing he really remembers is watching the Tinkerbell movies -- Jean’s choice, actually, because he could never mangle actual good film with his and Eren’s drunken commentary -- and Eren’s head heavy in his lap, Jean running his fingers through his hair.

Jean glances at the clock, glaring red from across the room.  9:34.

What time had they gone to bed?  3:30?  4:00?

He sighs.  Five hours isn’t too bad.

Too early to wake up Eren, though.  Jean sits up, holding a hand to his head.  He’ll probably have enough time to make breakfast and watch some more shit on Netflix before he can justify waking Eren up.  They’re supposed to go over to Eren’s later today to have Christmas dinner with Mikasa and Armin, but that’s a long way off, and --

Below, Eren grumbles something unintelligible, looping his fingers loose around Jean’s wrist.  “Time is it?”

Jean disentangles Eren’s fingers from his wrist, shushing him.  “Hey, go back to sleep.”

Eren cracks a bright green eye open to glare at Jean.  “Don’t shush me,” he mumbles, before yawning and pushing himself up, back arching as he blinks his eyes.  He glances over his shoulder at the clock.  “Too fuckin’ early.”

“I told you to go back to sleep.”

Eren props himself up on his elbows, gazing up at Jean with a mischievous glint in his eyes.  “You’re so pretty, though,” he says, sliding an arm over Jean’s hips, burying his nose in the ridge of a hipbone.  “It woke me up.”

Jean scoffs in disbelief.  “I can’t fucking believe you,”

“Was that a ‘yes, Eren, I’m very pretty, and I’d _love_ for you to suck my’ -- ”

Jean shoves at his forehead, blushing.  “Stop calling me pretty, asshole.”  Through the gap in his fingers, he sees Eren smile.  “You only slept for like five hours, how are you even awake?”

“Slept for most of the movie,” Eren says, hanging on to Jean with a tenacity Jean hadn’t quite expected.  

“You didn’t miss much.”  Jean moves his hand to the back of Eren’s head, running his fingers through Eren’s hair -- not washed since yesterday morning, but still soft against Jean’s palm.  

Eren smiles, tugging at the elastic waistband of Jean’s pajama bottoms.  “Is that a ‘yes’?”

Jean groans, leaning back and letting his head thump loud on the wall behind the bed.  “Are you ever not horny?” he asks, tightening his grip in Eren’s hair, watching carefully for the way his eyes flutter closed, teeth digging into his lip.

Eren sighs, licking his lips.  “I’m taking that as a yes.”

\---

Jean’s breath comes in hot, heavy pants as he mutters, “Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”

Eren leans up and kisses him.  “Merry Christmas.”

Jean reaches a hand up to ruffle through the roots of his undercut, sweat clinging to the back of his neck.  “That better not have been my actual Christmas present.”

Eren laughs -- pretty good-naturedly, Jean decides, considering that was a pretty rude thing to say to someone who just gave him a blowjob -- and rolls off him.  “It’s not.”  Eren licks his lips.  “I’d blow you even if I didn’t owe you a gift.”

Jean feels the bridge of his nose and the tips of his ears flush an embarrassing shade of red, and he desperately tries to hide it with the palm of his hand.

Another laugh from Eren, this time a bit more mean-spirited, if Jean has anything to say about it.  “You’re cute when you’re embarrassed.”

“Shut up,” Jean hisses, and rolls over to take his turn to press Eren into the mattress.

“Yes, sir,” Eren teases with a wink.

Jean groans, exasperatedly.  “I hate you.”

“And my weird kinks?”

“And your weird kinks.”

Eren grins.  “At least I don’t have stupid hair.”

Jean sneaks in a short, rough kiss before he bites out, “My hair is cool, fuck you.”

“Yes please,” Eren says, hiking his knees up around Jean’s hips.

Jean rolls his eyes.

\---

It’s not too long before the both of them manage to stumble out of Jean’s room, just in time to have meal that could just barely be considered breakfast.  Eren sits on the edge of Jean’s counter, his arms stuffed into one of Jean’s button-downs -- he’s shorter than Jean, but broader, and looking at him now Jean’s half-concerned the seams holding his shirt together are going to come undone as they try to accommodate Eren’s musculature.  “This is the best Christmas morning,” Eren mumbles around a mouthful of Rice Krispies, spraying bits of milk out from between his lips.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

“Fuck you.”

Jean rolls his eyes, his spoon making a dull noise as he places his empty bowl on the counter.

“It’s Christmas, I do what I want,” Eren continues, waving his spoon in the air.

“You do whatever you want anyways.”

Eren rolls his eyes right back.

Jean watches as he tips the bowl back into his mouth, drinking the last of the milk all in one go, and slams his bowl against the counter.  “Awesome,” he mutters to himself.  Jean doesn’t miss the way his eyes light up that pretty green color as he smiles, heels kicking at the wooden cabinets beneath his feet.

Jean bites into the side of his tongue, and looks away.  He vaguely wonders what exactly he would do if he does happen to fuck all of this up with an inappropriate Christmas gift.  “Yeah,” he agrees.  And -- he comforts himself quickly -- does he have any idea how unlikely that is to happen?  It’s Eren fucking Jaeger, he doesn’t have _boundaries_ , for fuck’s sake.

“And you know what would make it even better?” Eren asks, hopping down from the counter.  Jean gets a good look at his underwear in the process, as Eren hadn’t exactly bothered to put on pants that morning.

“Hm?”

“Presents!” Eren says, grabbing Jean by the hand and dragging him into the living room.

“Oh, so the blow job wasn’t my entire gift?”

Eren snickers.  “I thought we already established that.”

“I don’t know, knowing you, Jaeger….” Jean trails off.

Eren swats him on the arm just before he urges Jean to sit on the carpet of their tiny living room, pushing down on his shoulders and saying, “Sit.”

“Why don’t I just sit on the _couch?”_ Jean asks, pointing to the very conveniently-placed couch behind him.

“You always open Christmas presents on the floor, Jean.  Duh,” he says, stepping away and disappearing into the laundry room to rifle through -- something.

“What are you -- ?” Jean asks as he goes to crouch on the floor.

“Just hold on!” Eren shouts back.  Jean distinctly hears the clang! of something heavy crashing into the empty washing machine.

“Jaeger, I swear, if you break anything -- !”

“I didn’t break anything,” Eren grumbles, emerging from the laundry room with hands raised sarcastically above his head.  Jean gives him a suspicious look as he walks back towards Jean, plopping down on the carpet in front of him.  “Merry Christmas,” he says, shoving a present wrapped haphazardly in bright blue Santa-themed paper, the corners crinkled and uneven, the pieces of tape stuck on the wrong way.

“You know,” Jean says, “you can use less tape if you put the long side of the piece along here -- ”

“Jean,” Eren says, almost pityingly, “I don’t care.”

Jean pulls his lip up to make a mocking face at Eren before he shakes his present up and down.  It’s mostly dulled out, but he’s pretty sure after a few times that it’s the telltale click of a disc on plastic.  “DVDs?” he asks.

“Open it and find out,” Eren says, elbow perched against his knee.  “Dumbass.”

Jean, completely ignoring both of Eren’s comments, shakes it again, confirming his earlier hypothesis almost without a doubt.  “But what _kind_  of DVDs?”  Eren rolls his eyes and brushes a long strand of hair out of his face.  “A box set?”

“It’s the box set of every Nick Cage movie ever made,” Eren responds very seriously.

Jean squints.  “Nick Cage has way more movies than this.”

Eren laughs, loud and boisterous.  “Well, you’re not wrong.”

Jean stares rather suspiciously at his gift for a long second before he turns his gaze to Eren.  “You didn’t _actually_  get me Nick Cage movies.”

“Just open the goddamn present!”

And, finally, Jean does so, tearing the paper off all at once, leaving a horde of plastic cases in his hands.  Internally, Jean praises himself for his excellent guessing skills.

“I, uh -- “ Eren stutters as Jean pulls Eren’s overlong strips of tape from the packaging and leafs through each with a careful eye.  Pretty astoundingly, they’re all movies his doesn’t already possess.  “Know you like weird Indie movies.  Obviously.”  He runs a hand over the back of his neck, ruffling his hair in the process.  “So I found ones that sounded -- not horrible.  That we could maybe watch together.”  Sitting on the floor of Jean’s living room, he shifts awkwardly, gripping his ankles.

“Thank you,” Jean says, furrowing his eyebrows and making a conscious effort to infuse as much sincerity into the statement as he can before he follows it up with, “You know this one is about incest, right?”

“Wait, really?” Eren snatches the case out of Jean’s hands to peer accusatorially at the back of the case.  “Oh,” he says, after a long moment.  “All I saw was ‘sex’.”

Jean closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose.  “You’re like fucking thirteen, oh my _god_.”

“I am -- “ Eren starts to protest, but shuts his mouth again almost immediately, cutting himself off.  “Yeah, kinda.”  Jean allows himself to feel just a _little_  bit superior at that, crossing his arms and grinning, right up until the point where Eren teases him, “But at least I’m not an asshole.”

Jean’s jaw drops.  “You’re an asshole, asshole!”

Eren grins, the corners of his mouth turning up into a smile.  “Merry Christmas, Jean.”

Jean scoffs, setting his new stack of DVDs to the side so he can lean over to Eren and press their lips together.  “Merry Christmas.  Dumbass.”

Eren smiles -- an actual happy (if not rather stupid-looking) smile, which strikes Jean as at least a little bit weird considering the fact that he had just called Eren a dumbass before he realizes that he’s smiling in the exact same stupid way.  Eren runs his fingers over the back of Jean’s head, and pulls him in to kiss him again.

“I like my present,” Jean murmurs, and tacks on belatedly, “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Eren says.  “Now, give me mine.”

Eren smiles jokingly at him, their knees brushing against each other’s.  There’s no Christmas tree, no decorations or Christmas specials, and this morning Jean had to watch Eren spew milk across the kitchen when he tried to talk with cereal in his mouth, but it’s probably the best Christmas Jean’s ever had.  All at once, Jean remembers every single thing Marco had said to him about how exactly this could go wrong (horribly awkward) and blow up in his face.  He looks at Eren’s pretty green eyes and his carefree expression and it hits him hard exactly how much he doesn’t want to screw this up.

“Um,” Jean says at the same time his stomach flips over a good three times in his abdomen, and he feels just a bit like he’s going to be sick.  “Hold on.”  He stumbles to his feet and rushes back into his bedroom.  Manufactured courage, he thinks to himself.  That’s something he’s good at.  Fake it ‘till you make it.  The drawer of his desk is stuffed full of old pens and sticky notes and Jean has to shove all of them out of the way -- he had only put it in here just yesterday, it should still be here -- but Jean’s brain takes a second to short out with panic and he fumbles --

He hears Eren in the doorway.  “Are you okay?”  He poses the question gently, not with pity but a tone totally unconscious of the fact that he could probably rip a gaping hole in Jean’s self-esteem with a well-constructed comment right about now.

“Fine!” Jean yelps (he doesn’t mean to, it just kind of happens) just before he clasps the envelope in his fingers.  “Here!” he says, and it comes out as a shout, but Eren doesn’t say anything about it.

He takes the gift from Jean, quickly taking in the shiny blue paper, kindly provided by Marco when Jean had realized last-minute he didn’t have a square inch of the stuff.  Eren doesn’t really fuck around with guessing games like Jean had, though, and tears off the wrappings so haphazardly he almost rips the envelope inside in the process.

Eren stares at it for an uncomfortably long moment, the back flap hanging open, and lets the paper fall gently to the floor.  Jean is so wrapped up -- no pun intended -- in watching Eren’s face that he doesn’t point it out.  It seems like a veritable eternity to Jean while Eren just continues to stare kind of blankly, his eyebrows scrunched together in confusion.  Jean feels a wave of hot panic rise in his throat, but he bites his own lip and keeps his mouth shut, lets Eren figure it out for himself.  He watches as Eren rifles through the cash inside, confusion slowly growing more and more evident until his expression resolves into a resigned realization of, ‘Okay, Jean got me a shitload of cash for Christmas; not terrible.’

And then his fingers stumble upon the business card.

Jean had asked Mikasa, actually -- which had been a terrifying experience, to say the very least, especially when she had started interrogating him as to why Jean needed to know where Eren had got his existing tattoos, why should she tell him, “I don’t like you, Kirstein.”  (And Mikasa’s own temperamental overprotectiveness was culpable for the whole ordeal, Jean would firmly tell anyone who asked, and not Jean’s own suspicious levels of skittishness when talking to her, not at _all_.)

Eren pulls out the card and blinks at it owlishly.  Jean feels a little something warm worm its way into his heart when he remembers that, after the fact, Mikasa had told him that it was a sweet idea.

“You’re...getting me a tattoo?”

Jean swallows thickly.  “You had mentioned wanting to get -- another one, and -- “  Eren had been nervous giving _his_ gift, Jean remembers, but it couldn’t have come anywhere close to being as nerve-wracking as explaining _this_.  “Obviously you don’t have to if you don’t want to.  And I kind of had to guess on the pricing, but -- “

Eren’s lips part, his eyes widen, and after a second of staring blankly at Jean he says, “Okay, this is the coolest gift anyone’s ever gotten me.”

Jean pushes his glasses up his nose and clears his throat.  Eren continues to stare at him.  “Thanks?” Jean says, and then Eren throws his arms around Jean’s neck, pulling him bodily down just a few inches in order to kiss him.

“You’re not as shitty a boyfriend as I thought,” Eren whispers into Jean’s lips, teasing.  Jean sputters, but doesn’t have much of a coherent response prepared before Eren shoves him towards the bed and says, “I’m going to suck you off again, okay?”

\---

“Okay,” Jean says, panting.  “That’s it.  I’m officially done for the day.  No more sex.  I’m done.”

Eren rests his head against Jean’s hip and _Jesus fucking Christ_ there is a drop of come still on his lip and this _is_ actually the best Christmas ever, wow.  “You’re like nineteen, how do you have this little stamina?” Eren says, and licks his lips.  He doesn’t look nearly as pissed-off as that sentence would usually indicate, just kind of comfy and generally satisfied with his life choices.  “What are you going to do when you’re like, thirty?”

“Shut up,” Jean mumbles, pushing playfully at Eren’s forehead.

Eren refuses to budge.  He ignores Jean totally, actually, and takes the chance to pout up at him instead.  It’s such an exaggerated and over-the-top expression that Jean doesn’t doubt for even a second that it’s fake.  “Does this mean I have to get myself off?”

Jean hesitates, wetting his lips.  That hadn’t been exactly what he meant, just that that Jean couldn’t stand to have another orgasm today, but --

“We told Mikasa and Armin we’d be over at one.”  It’s twelve thirty now.  They’re only a few minutes’ walk away, but….

“I’m nineteen, fuck responsibility,” Eren says, tapping out a jittery beat against Jean’s hip.  “Mikasa won’t care.”

“She will and you know it.”  Jean props himself up on his elbows to stare down at Eren, who still seems pretty content to hang out next to his limp dick, for whatever reason.  “She’ll probably kill me and cook _me_  up for Christmas.”

Eren frowns.  “You’re exaggerating,” he says, “and _you_  know it.”

Jean pauses, clicks his tongue.  “Not in the slightest,” he says.  “She’ll stab me in the heart and stuff me in the oven.”

Eren pushes himself up off of Jean, shaking his head.  “Or she could just stuff you in the oven alive.”

Jean wrinkles his nose.  “Ew.”

Eren bursts into sudden laughter.  “Getting cooked alive is  _ew?"_

Jean shrugs.  “Yeah, pretty much.”

Eren continues laughing, finally choosing to scale up Jean’s body until he can press a kiss to Jean’s lips.  “You’re fucking weird.”

Jean flicks him on the nose.  “ _You're_  fucking weird,” he says, but presses another kiss to Eren’s lips before he can get a response, and shoves his hand down the front of Eren’s briefs.

“Oh my god,” Eren groans into Jean’s mouth.  “Best boyfriend,” he says.  “Best boyfriend ever.”

\---

“So,” Jean says as he shuts and locks the door behind him, shoving his hands into his hoodie.  It’s only seventy-five out -- frankly, neither one of them probably needs a jacket for the ten-minute walk to Mikasa’s and Armin’s (and Eren’s, Jean reminds himself -- his boyfriend does not actually live with him, despite what the last few months have felt like) apartment, but it would feel wrong to be out on Christmas afternoon with only a long-sleeved shirt.

“So?” Eren asks, an extra bounce in his step that isn’t usually present.  It makes Jean smile.

“What do you think you’re gonna get?”

“Tattoo-wise?”  Eren looks up and away from Jean, thinking.  “I don’t know.  I’ll have to think about it.”  He clicks his tongue.  “I have some ideas.”

Jean blinks.  “What kind of ideas?”

Eren snickers, a little more lively than he usually is, and the whole picture of him with his bright green eyes and cute little smile makes Jean bite the inside of his lip, like he’s holding something back.  “Secret.”

Jean raises an eyebrow.  “Secret?”

Eren nods.  “Yup.  You’ll just have to wait and see.”

\---

Over the next few weeks, Jean only catches a few hints of what exactly Eren might be planning on getting inked on his skin forever.  Jean has never much liked surprises, but he can be pretty patient when he puts his mind to it, and spending the next few weeks wondering what Eren’s going to do takes the form of some kind of game.  A few times, he catches Eren doodling in his sketchbook -- “You draw?” Jean asks, and Eren slams it closed before Jean can register anything more than that whatever he had been drawing had been vaguely “X”-shaped.  Other times, he’ll make half-hearted attempts to ply the answer out of Eren with illegally-obtained booze or transparently flattering comments (“That’s laying it on pretty fuckin’ thick, Jean.”)  

It’s fun.  Jean thinks Eren enjoys it, too.

He’s actually kind of surprised when Eren shows up at his door in early February with a big fat grin on his face and says, “I got it.”

Jean blinks.  “Got what?”

Eren raises and eyebrow.  Somewhere behind Jean, he can hear Marco’s fussing in the kitchen come to an abrupt halt.  It takes Jean a solid second of staring blankly at Eren’s amused and rather disbelieving expression before it clicks.  “Oh!” he says, and then, “ _Oh_.”  He swallows.  “Where?  Can I see?”

Marco coughs loudly from the other room.  He had been halfway through putting away the dishes.  “Well, I have some studying to do!” he says, just a tad too loudly.  “I’ll just be on my way!”

Eren flounders, stepping fully into their apartment to try to catch Marco before he blusters out the door.  “Wait, Marco, you don’t have to -- !”

“Nope, really, it’s fine!” Marco says, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.  “I really do have a big Econ test next week, so I should probably get on that.”  Marco brushes past Jean in the doorway, patting Eren on the back before he grabs the doorknob behind him.  Jean does not say anything.  Eren hopelessly turns to watch Marco slam the door behind himself.  “Have fun!”

“That was not my fault,” Eren says.

Jean skims his eyes over Eren’s arms -- he’s got a short-sleeved shirt on, but Jean can’t see anything there.  “Eren,” he says, placing a hand on Eren’s shoulder, “I do not even care enough to do this right now, can you please just show me the tattoo.”

Eren snickers.  “Eager,” he says, and it’s toned like an insult.  “And you just _let_ Marco leave.”

Jean shifts from foot to foot, uncomfortably.  “Well, I mean -- “

“That was _your_ fault,” Eren says.  “ _You_ kicked Marco out of his own house.”

Jean’s other hand collides into Eren’s shoulder with a little more drama than is probably necessary.  It's not really his fault, honestly, he just can't stop thinking about whether Eren's got it on his shoulder or his back or his chest, his hip.  What did he get?  Jean honestly had no idea, and the mystery makes his blood race.  “ _Eren_.”

Eren grins, and Jean swears the edges of his mouth practically reach his ears.  “Okay, okay,” he says, and then:  “I think you’re probably gonna like it.”

"Am I?" Jean asks, and it's supposed to be rhetorical and witty but instead comes out as rather distracted, and Jean feels like every tremor in his voice must be perfectly evident to Eren.

Which, judging by the way Eren grins, it is.  But he doesn't say anything, just turns around in the doorway of Jean and Marco's apartment a mischievous grin splitting his face, and lifts up his shirt.

For a second Jean is totally convinced that Eren is going to take his entire shirt off, peel it away to reveal another tattoo on his shoulder -- but Eren only lifts it halfway up his back.

Jean is physically incapable of not letting his jaw go slack.  "Oh my god," he says.  "You have a tramp stamp."

Eren's grin only grows wider.  He peers over his shoulder to watch Jean's cheeks, and then his entire face, erupt into a blush.  “Cool, isn’t it?

Jean takes a second to blink a few times and pay some actual attention to the design -- he leans closer and Eren juts his hips backwards a few inches.  With his eyes, Jean traces along the edges, the red, puffy skin rising up around the thick black lines and the gray and the yellow.  Jean would’ve thought that yellow would look horrible against anyone’s skin, but it’s this dark, dark shade that goes almost black at points.

“Don’t touch it yet -- “

Jean cuts him off, “I know.”  He examines the lines forming the handle of a gas pump and then the nozzle, which crosses with the barrel of a handgun about halfway along.  “Cool,” Jean mutters to himself, placing his hands on either side of Eren’s hips.  It looks downright dystopian, like something he’d see in a -- robot movie, or something.  But an old one.  A good one, he reassures himself.

And then Jean gets a hold of himself just a little bit better, enough to actually vocalize properly, and says, “Cool is one word.”

Eren glares at him over his shoulder.  “What is that supposed to -- “

Jean continues on like Eren hadn’t even spoken.  “ _Insanely fucking hot_ is another.”

“That’s a phrase, Jean.”

“Don’t care,” Jean says succinctly, and hooks his fingers into the waistband of Eren’s jeans.  He’s about to say something decidedly sexual because _oh my god_  he really can’t believe Eren got a tattoo on his lower back, he cannot actually believe -- but some other feeling interrupts him, hooks in his stomach and takes him out of the moment.  “You know the trial is soon.”

Eren starts.  “Huh?”

“In, like, two weeks.”

“Uh, yeah,” Eren says.  “I know.”

They stand there in silence for a long moment.  Jean has officially ruined the moment, he’s pretty sure -- though Eren could probably get it up anytime, so he’s not exactly weeping the loss of Eren’s potential boner, or anything, but -- “You got this.”

It’s not a very specific sentence, but Eren seems to understand anyway.  “It’s important,” he says.  “Having a couple of guns waved in your face is a bit of a life-changing experience.”

“Uh, yeah,” Jean says.  “Yeah, I guess it is.”

Eren lets his shirt fall back down and turns around to face Jean.  “There aren’t too many times I’ve felt well and truly helpless,” he says, and Jean watches with a fascinated as one of his hands wanders up to his chest, the place where Jean knows he has a set of wings inked into his skin for as long as his body holds in this earthly plane -- or, well, ignoring the possibility of cover-ups or laser removal.  But it’s the principle of the matter that Jean’s trying to get to the heart of.  It hadn’t occurred to him before, but Eren probably got things that were important to him as tattoos.  Jean had just never bothered to ask about it.

“Eren, what happened -- “

Eren leans in and kisses Jean mid-sentence, teeth and lips clashing in a disorganized jumble.  “Not now,” Eren says.

Jean is about to ask him what, or why, did Eren even know what he was going to ask? but before he can even open his mouth, Eren presses up against him, just a few tantalizing inches shorter than Jean, and says, “Right now you should appreciate my new ink,” he says, “and fuck me.”

Jean blushes.  “What?”

“You could bend me over the arm of the couch,” Eren suggests, innocently -- no, not innocently, Jean thinks, but without any kind of constructed tone or manufactured emotion or shame, it’s just who Eren _is_.  “That would probably give you a pretty good view.”  

Jean knows that Eren’s continuing along the way he is as a distraction, meant to change the subject -- which is at least a bit disquieting, because Eren is very rarely unwilling to talk about specific things so much that he tries to manipulate the conversation; Jean’s never seen him do that.  But he can’t say that it’s not effective -- Jean feels his chest flush along with most of his face, his teeth dig into the meat of his lip.  And if Eren doesn’t want to talk about it, Jean can’t exactly force him.

Not to mention, Jean seriously doubts whether he has the willpower to pursue that (probably pretty serious) conversation, or any conversation at all.  Eren, more roughly than he would like, shoves Jean up against the nearest wall and presses his teeth into Jean’s neck.  “You up for that?”

Jean bites his lip.  “ _God_ yes,” he says.  “Let me just -- “ he pushes Eren away.  “Let me go to my room and grab -- “

His hand gesture is weird and probably incomprehensible without context, but Eren seems to get it.  “Yeah,” Eren says.  “Sure.”

“Also,” Jean says, just before he turns down the corner.  “Can we talk about it later?”

Eren stares at him, eyes wide and just a tiny bit disbelieving.  “Uh,” he says.

“Because,” Jean swallows thickly.  “I mean, I really do want to know about...you.”

“Right,” Eren says, and then repeats, “Right.”

Jean hangs awkwardly in the corner, and feels his stomach drop to his fucking toes.

And then, after a second.  “I’ll tell you,” he says.  His eyes shine deep and contemplative.  It’s not a look Jean particularly wants to see on Eren Jaeger ever again.  “Just not now,” he says.  “Later.”

“Right,” Jean says.

They both continue to stand there, awkwardly distant.

“Okay, but right now you’re going to go get lube and condoms, right?”

Jean starts.  “Y-Yeah!” he says, storming back to his bedroom in a fit of embarrassment.  The fact that they had been about to have sex had almost entirely skipped his mind.  Jean can hear Eren snickering from the other room.

Jean comes back to find Eren standing in the living room, gazing rather thoughtfully down at the arm of the couch.  “We can talk about it later,” he says, glancing up at Jean.  “I trust you.”  He bites his lip.  “It’s just -- not entirely my story to tell.”

Jean immediately feels himself let out a breath of air he hadn’t known he’d been holding, and tries to ignore exactly how much that explanation makes him feel better.  “Okay,” Jean says.  “Yeah, that’s cool.”

Before Jean can follow that up with some snark about -- something, Jean would definitely have come up with something -- Eren opens his mouth and says, sagely, “Because right now I really want you to fuck me over the arm of the couch.”

Jean nearly drops the box of condoms.

“And appreciate my new tattoo.”

“Right,” Jean says.  “I can do that.”

“Good,” Eren says, and then:  “Merry Christmas.”

Jean scoffs as he moves to tug Eren’s shirt over his head.  “It’s fucking February, Eren.”

Eren rolls his eyes.  “Happy Valentine’s day?” he asks.  “Oh, no!” he slaps Jean on the arm.  “Happy anniversary!” he says.  “Or close enough.”

Jean laughs.  “Pretty good anniversary present.”

“I’ll say.”  Eren grins.  “You’re lucky.”

Jean presses a gentle kiss to Eren’s lips.  “Yeah,” he says.  “I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> Jean does not know that the dystopian gas-and-violence-related movie he is thinking of is Mad Max.


End file.
